I have lived this story across three countries, three cultures, and three very different versions of what it means to show up to work and be taken seriously.
Nobody gave me a manual. Nobody sat me down and said: here is how people communicate differently in the UK, here is how lonely it actually gets, here is what your salary feels like when a new city takes its share of it. I had to figure all of that out myself.
This is the article I wish someone had written before I left Lagos.
Lagos. Where I started.
Nigerian banking is loud, fast, and intensely relationship-driven. People talk over each other in meetings and it is not disrespectful, it is engagement. Hierarchy is visible and respected. There is a collective hunger that is genuinely motivating.
I did not fully appreciate any of this until I left.
The UK. JPMorgan. A different planet.
The first thing that hit me was not the cold. It was the silence.
British workplace culture operates on a frequency I had never encountered before. Nobody tells you what they actually think in a meeting. Disagreement is wrapped in so many layers of politeness that you can leave a room not fully realising someone just pushed back on everything you said.
The feedback culture was the hardest adjustment for me personally. Back home, if something was wrong, someone told you directly. In the UK you get a thoughtful email a day later. Or nothing at all, which somehow means something too. Learning to read what was not being said took me longer than I want to admit.
Then there was the social architecture that operates quietly beneath the surface. Certain schools, certain accents, certain networks that open doors without announcing themselves. As someone who came in without any of those things, you feel it without anyone ever naming it. I was not bitter about it. But I noticed.
The money reality nobody really talks about
I was earning more than I had ever earned in my life. On paper it looked transformative.
Then I paid rent.
After tax, transport, and the basic cost of existing in one of the most expensive cities in the world, what remained was considerably less than the headline salary suggested. Nobody prepares you for that first month when the reality of costs lands on a salary that looked generous until it met the rent and the tax bill.
The loneliness nobody posts about
This is the part people do not talk about because it does not make a good LinkedIn update.
In the UK it is entirely possible to feel profoundly alone. Especially when you are in a demanding job, in a country where the social rules are different, with a support network that is a five-hour flight away.
Community is not something you have to seek out back home. It surrounds you. In the UK it is something you have to build from scratch, deliberately and patiently. I had colleagues. But there is a difference between the people you see in an office and the people who actually know you.
I got through it. But it took honesty with myself about what I was feeling rather than performing the version of thriving that the move was supposed to look like.
Working with people from everywhere
Hmm, this is actually one of the parts of working at JPMorgan that I valued most, even if it took time to appreciate it properly.
I worked alongside people from Britain, the US, France, Germany, India, Hong Kong, Nigeria, Brazil, and more. Every one of them brought different assumptions about how work should be done and what professionalism looks like.
American colleagues were direct in a way that initially read as abrupt but turned out to be refreshingly clear. French and German colleagues brought rigour and a commitment to getting the foundation right before moving. Indian colleagues brought an extraordinary ability to deliver within constraints. I recognised something familiar in that.
What I had to learn was that none of these approaches was wrong. They were all products of different histories and different relationships with authority and communication. My job was not to judge them. It was to understand them well enough to work across all of them. That skill does not appear on any CV. But it has opened more doors than almost anything else in my career.
Canada. my current employer. Starting again.
Joining a leading global bank in Canada gave me something I did not fully expect: an environment where different perspectives genuinely felt valued rather than merely tolerated. Coming in with a background that crossed three countries, I felt my experience was an asset rather than something to quietly explain.
Canadian culture more broadly is warm in a way the UK is not. There is a collaborative instinct that feels real rather than performed. I found this inefficient at first, uh, honestly. Over time I came to appreciate it deeply.
The loneliness was still present. Building a life in a new country never stops requiring active effort. And nobody sufficiently prepared me for the cold.
Why I would do it all again
The loneliness was real. The money reality was sobering. The cultural adjustment took more out of me than I expected.
But what I gained cannot be measured in a salary figure. I learned to work with people from everywhere. I learned to read rooms that were not built for people who look like me, and perform in them anyway. I built a career across three countries and some of the most respected institutions in global banking.
And I learned something about myself. That I could land somewhere unfamiliar with no manual and no guarantee of anything, and figure it out. That knowledge does not leave you. It compounds.
If you are standing where I once stood, the discomfort you feel is appropriate. It is a big decision. But so is what is on the other side of it.
Disclaimer: Everything here is based on my own personal experience and perspective. It is not professional advice of any kind. Every person's situation is different, and what was true for me may not be true for you.
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